Month: November 2005

We are starting out by testing our immersion chiller. It worked well. We were able to reduce to temperature of 2 gallon to the 80 in just a few minutes. But, failure struck with the outlet hose burst do to over heating.

Chalk that up to not thinking!

New technique:
We are putting the chiller in after we turn off the gas burner. This should allow the temperature to start dropping.

Our first beer is High Red Tide Bock which is made from 7.7 lbs light malt extract, 1 lb Weyermann Light Munich, and 4 oz. Muntons Roasted Barley. I don't remember the type of hops. I'll be using a White Labs German Ale/Kolsch yeast.

Our second beer is called Vincent's Wee Heavy. It is called this because of the 11 lbs of light malt extract used. The speciality grains Muntons Crystal 60 and Roasted Barley are inlcuded.

Karen and I built an immersion chiller to speed up our brewing. You can easily make one of these for your homebrewing. All you need is 25 to 50 feet of copper tubing. The 1/4 inch diameter tubing is cheapest and will work well. You will need two adapters to convert the 1/4 tubing to garden hose. HomeDepot has all these parts. You can get it all for about 20 to 30 bucks.

The chiller will shorten brewing time greatly. With all malt or partial malt recipes, the chiller will reduce the cooling time required prior to pitching your yeast to 15 minutes or less.

To use the chiller, you connect your garden hose to one of the inlets on the chiller. You connect another hose to the outlet. This second hose is just to direct the waste water away from you and the beer so any hose should work. (I have heard some people connect the hose to a sprinkler to water their yard at the same time.) After connecting everything together, you place the chiller in your brew pot and turn on the water.

It should be noted that the chiller should be cleaned just as all brewing equipment must be sanitized prior to usage. If your brewing method includes boiling the malt, you can sanitize the chiller by placing it directly into the brew pot during the boil to sanitize the chiller.

Well, I put in our order for brewing supplies. We are trying out ALABREW for our supplies.

We meet Kim Thomson of ALABREW during a Free The Hops Beer Tasting in Birmingham, Alabama.

ALABREW has a rich selection of supplies for the homebrewer and winemaker.

We ordered the High Red Tide Bock and Vincent's Wee Heavy kits.

It has been sometime since Karen and I have brewed beer, but we are planning on brewing two batches over the Thanksgiving break.

We have already picked up some beer to drink during the homebrewing session. (This first is critical to the success.) Now, I just need to order the homebrewing supplies.

We are going to use pig kegs instead of Cornelius or Firestone kegs. Karen want to be able to transport the beer easily.